


Alive

by XantunsiaRiveresiana



Series: Xantunsia Riveresiana Chronicles [5]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Female Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers, Gen, Hunters & Hunting, Miqo'te Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-13
Updated: 2020-04-13
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:06:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23628148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/XantunsiaRiveresiana/pseuds/XantunsiaRiveresiana
Summary: Xantunsia thinks back on her first days in Eorzea
Series: Xantunsia Riveresiana Chronicles [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1700809





	Alive

"Take this and kill 3 marmots" the large person said. I wordlessly grabbed the tool and went off with my thoughts.  
"He looked like... Durango... if he had gotten a bit bigger" I thought to myself. There were only a handful of us from the island that looked like that, but apparently there were a lot here. Roegadyn they called them. I didn't know. There was a lot I didn't know. I didn't like that.  
I held the thing crooked and uneasily. It was heavy, weighed me down, and seemed slow. "This can help you kill Monsters? How?"

I didn't know that either.  
But I did know what I saw. The people of this land using these objects to hunt, to fight, to beat large beasts single handedly. No traps or preparation, what took us weeks of hunting, stalking, and coordination, took them minutes.  
I was by myself now, I had to learn their ways. There was only so much my claws could do.  
I'd never fought a Marmot before. There was never a reason to. They were docile, it was more effective to hunt aggressive beasts. They were usually larger, with more meat, and eating them meant one less thing to eat us. But my objective now was Marmots. Why was it again? Training? 

I didn't understand.  
I walked up to the creature, and it took a few moments of repressing my baser combat instincts to ready myself to swing at it. Even as the object in my hands swung down it didn't make a move to avoid it. That didn't sit well with me, but clumsily I smacked it away with the axe anyway. It was clearly hurt, but not nearly enough as the creature rebounded off the ground, facing me in an aggressive stance.

The next few moments were a blur, but I regained my composure to find myself in my own usual aggressive stance, down on all fours, a dead marmot's neck crushed in my jaw, and the axe tossed to the side. More than a few people were staring at me as well. Was this unusual here...?  
I spat out the marmot and picked up the axe again. This was harder than I thought, suppressing my instincts. I knew that alone, that way of fighting would not be enough to survive here, the scratches a that mere marmot had landed on me before I broke its neck proved that.   
I had to relearn, relearn everything.

I took the stance again and batted at more marmots. Each time it took a bit longer, but before the creature attacked everything would blur again, and there I was biting into its neck.  
"Focus... focus...!"  
I was getting closer but something kept stopping me, like I wanted to do this and didn't at the same time. I must have killed 30 marmots on the course of it all. Finally, locking my whole body into place with all the strength I could muster, I held strong to the stance I was taught. And I realized exactly what was happening.

Those times I blurred out, I slipped behind the marmots and quickly bit into their necks every time. I knew instinctively that should that have failed I could retreat, find cover, return to safety, restart the hunt later. I would keep moving, refusing to face the Marmot. I was running.  
Not from the marmot, but from myself, from the act of facing the marmot. Because what I saw when I finally forced myself to face the tiny creature was no creature at all. It was a Monster.  
All of the Monsters. Every Monster on that island, every clansmate that they brutalized, tortured, devoured, every single thing that happened on that island when you stopped running. Which is exactly what I did.

These thoughts froze me before this monster. Froze me as still as all the corpses I left behind, as still as all the friends I killed. Frozen as if I was one of them, a part of the dead.  
Except I wasn't. I couldn't move willingly, but as I drowned in this terror, the surface rippled. My hand, gripping the axe, was shaking. Shaking so much I barely had a hold of the object. Shaking as if all the fear I had spent all this time running from hit me at once, and I realized something. Something I knew, from all the corpses I had seen.  
The dead don't shake. The dead are no longer scared. Only the living fear.  
"Make your choice"

As if the question shot my head out of a lake at the last minute, I gasped for air in place. That fearful eternity seemed to only have been but a moment, for the marmot had just started to leap at me. I answered the voice in my head as I did most things. Instinctually, I lifted the shaking axe and brought it down on the creature with a scream.

\---

As the giant, ancient darkness stood over Xantunsia and her allies, the Miqo'te Warrior took a deep breath beneath her helm. She calmed her mind for the coming battle  
And noticed her axe hand trembling  
She smiled. She was still alive. And she planned to keep it that way. Gripping her weapon tighter with a grin, she advances on her foe with a roar


End file.
